Interview of Raqs by Laurent Rollin
(for the Tour du Monde du Web - Centre Pompidou)

LR : In India, how does the Internet fit into the history of other mass media? Raqs : There is a long tradition of early adaptation to new technologies and new media forms in South Asia. Take for instance, the cinema. The cinema, like the internet today was once a new media form of remarkable technological sophistication. Yet, it did not take very long for the cinema to become a truly mass medium in South Asia, and for many decades now the different Indian film industries, based in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai (Madras), Trivandrum and Kolkata produce together the highest number of films in the world today. And cinema made in India today is as much a part of a global cultural mediascape as are the products that come out of Hollywood. The internet in India, and in South Asia in general needs to be seen against this context. LR : What is the relation between technology and modernity in India? Raqs: The history of technologies and modernity in India are closely intertwined. If you take the example of the railways, then it is clear that the “web” of the railway system integrated a national (or Imperial) market, and produced the means for mass migrations to take place to the cities. The cities of south Asia thus became laboratories of specific cosmopolitanisms, at least since the middle of the nineteenth centuries. We have already spoken of the cinema, but other mediums like photography, new printing technologies and the parallel histories of telegraphy and the radio created new publics and new forms of communication. Of course, a strong part of the ‘modern’ political and moral imagination that arose in India in the twentieth century especially reacted negatively to what it saw as the influence of the ‘other’ – the colonizing west, which was identified with its technological expertise and culture. This led to a certain devaluation of technological creativity within the discursive, or cultural sphere. Producing the desire for an ‘authentic’ Indian-ness un-mediated by technology, and at the same time, leaving the field open for an uncritical technomania to be espoused by sections of the technocratic elite, which equated the post independence ‘nation building’ project with mega technology projects such as the building of ecologically disastrous big dams, a wasteful space programme, and a nuclear weapons programme. On the other hand, in the streets and in backyard workshops all over South Asia, there emerged a creative, improvisational culture of “making do”, of adaptation, of street smart problem solving, creative mechanics and everyday inventiveness with recycling, and transformations of existing technologies to solve day to day problems of cities with failing public transport systems, highly unequal water, electricity and telecommunications systems and a general deterioration of public infrastructure. This culture, marked by its tense relationship to the law, is one of the most creative and energetic technocultures in the contemporary world. Often described as “jugadu” (Make Do) by its practitioners, it has evocatively been characterized by theorist Ravi Sundaram, as a culture of “pirate modernity”. It could be argued, that rather than in big dams and in a cyber elites notion of what it takes to be with the times, it is in the “pirate modernist’s” street level creativity that modernity leaves and breathes in Indian cities and towns. LR : There is this notion of the public sphere within cyberspace as a third space, in-between state owned networks on the one side and commercial zones on the other. One could think of community networks, public terminals, bringing culture on-line, free content and a reincarnation of public broadcasting. How is the current debate in India about this idea ? Raqs: An over reliance on the state from the fifties through to the eighties, and the cult of the market from the “post liberalization” eighties in India, has meant that a third, autonomous space for public initiatives in culture is negligible, or atrophied. Institutions such as Sarai, which we initiated along with Ravi Sundaram and Ravi Vasudevan at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, are exceptions, in that they make an explicit commitment to the democratic ideal of the public sphere as a space autonomous of the state and the market. It is important to note that they are rare. The media industry is huge in India, and an English Language Newspaper the Times of India, is the largest circulating English daily in the world. Television networks are massive, and are extremely sophisticated. The media industry is marked by high capital investment, is extremely corporate driven, and has an exaggerated sense of its own importance. Although Indian intellectuals pride themselves on the existence of a ‘free’ press, it is really surprising to see how little debate and dissent on really basic issues surfaces on this ‘free’ media. Rather, like big media everywhere, it reflects the interests of state and big business. However, an informal public sphere, exists, and does so vigorously, in close alliance with the forces of what we have described above as “Pirate Modernity”. This is the space of tea shops, university coffee houses and courtyard debates, the culture of leaflets and posters, political graffiti, and little magazines, an odd mixture of the narrowly high brow, with the broadly low brow. There have been efforts at creating a favourable climate for ‘public broadcasting’ primarily based on a landmark observation by one of the judges in the Indian Supreme Court some years ago that stated that the ‘Airwaves are public property’. However, this did not meet much success, as a conceptual confusion between “public sector” and “public domain” persisted in robbing this initiative of much needed discussion and clarification. One the other hand, a paranoia about the perils of free speech in a divided society like India also effectively scuttled a positive appreciation of the advantages of a “public” access-media. It is true however, that a small but significant and vigorous new public exists online, primarily through online mailing lists and discussion forums. Several of these, such as the Sarai Reader List, or the mailing lists hosted on the South Asian Citizens Web site, are lists with their own evolving and growing community who are beginning to discuss a wide range of issues, from politics, to culture, to new media activism, and civic issues. Others are more specific in their purposes, like ‘Bytes for All’ which combines an astute awareness of new media and technology together with a sensitivity to the specific social context and technological history of South Asia. There is also an active free software community that runs its own mailing lists and online spaces, as are extremely active fan clubs for film, music and poetry aficionados in a number of Indian languages. LR : In what way this still small part of the elite is using the Net and could we already speak about an Indian net culture? Raqs: It is important to understand that the Internet in Indian cities is not an elite medium. It is in fact cheaper and easier to access the Internet in Indian cities than in most western cities. However, this is a different culture of usage. It takes place in cyber cafés, not in the privacy of peoples homes, because computer ownership is still relatively low. However, low ownership is by no means an index of low access. Cyber cafés dot every neighbourhood in all Indian big cities, and in an increasing number of small towns, and are emerging as important places for young people from non elite backgrounds to meet and gather. It is much more expensive and difficult to get online say, on the street in Paris, than it is in the street of any Indian city. However, we are wary of using terms like an ‘Indian Net Culture’, not because the net is not present in Indian cities, but using the term Indian (or French, for that matter) as a prefix to modern cultural phenomena seems inaccurate to us. There are many cultures of net usage in Indian cities, driven by different imperatives, there is the culture of net usage that is based on telecom based labour in the new service industries (call centers), there is a net culture that is specific to the free software community, there is another that is centred around far right politics, and yet another that is centred around film and popular music. Each of these in turn is linked to other global networks. The Hindu far right in India and the Indian Diaspora to the Zionist Far Right in Israel, call center workers in India to their colleagues in the Philippines or Ireland, the music and film fans to their counterparts elsewhere, and the hackers to their fellow hackers everywhere. So it is more accurate to speak of specific manifestations and emergences of global cultural networks within the terrain of Indian cities, and the cultures that each of these is a part of, rather than to speak of an “Indian net culture. LR : How real is the Internet in India live? Raqs: As is evident from what we have just said, we consider the Internet to have an active life in India. It is used as a source of information, learning and entertainment. As a means for people to stay in touch with the many Indians who have traveled to distant parts of the world for work, and as a space for discussion, debate and speaking freely on online platforms and forums. However, the most important thing to keep in mind is the fact that the internet in India is also a site of labour. Indian cities are some of the most important sites for the dispersed services industry of the new economy worldwide. Millions of Indians are online today, because they are processing data, managing services and providing customer support via the internet to global corporations. The internet as a virtual factory space in the new industries that mark the networked global present is the real engine of cyberspace in India. LR : Could you tell us something about net activism in India from your point of view ? Raqs: The far right in India and in the Indian Diaspora has been extremely active in terms of net activism. It has used the internet not only to spread their message, but also to mobilize and organize, and occasionally to participate in political actions. There is a belated recognition on the part of many who are opposed to the agenda of the extreme right in India, that they need to take on the far right in cyberspace. Efforts have been underway in this direction for some time now, but it is too early to say how much success there has been in this direction. The internet has however been used very successfully by anti dam activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the River Narmada Movement) to mobilize international public opinion against the building of dams on the river Narmada. Also, anti war and anti nuclear activists were able to make their presence felt in small but significant ways in the last few years in India, especially following the nuclear tests in India and Pakistan, and the Kargil War in 2000, and in the wake of the state supported sectarian violence in the western Indian state of Gujarat in 2002 LR : How do you see the evolution and the future of countercultures in India ? Raqs: Popular counter cultural movements have a long history in South Asia, and there is a tradition of radical ‘outsider-ness’ in much of the mystical traditions that characterize our histories. However, what could be considered only an emergent contemporary counter cultural sensibility exists in fragmented pockets, and is often best expressed in informal cultural interventions, and particularly in poetry. For instance, poetry by dalit (oppressed caste) intellectuals in the seventies and eighties had strong counter cultural content – and this tradition remains alive in some parts of India It remains to be seen as to whether the conflicts that mark everyday life in the major Indian cities are able to generate an adequate counter cultural response. The overwhelming presence of big media industries, particularly film and the music industry, and the grip that they have on the popular imagination, suggests that this might happen first in those parts of the territory of the Indian state that are most marginal to the mainstream. This might happen in parts in the music culture amongst young people in the insurgency stricken parts of north eastern India, or perhaps it might occur through a new vigour in literature in South Asian languages, enabled in part through a new online public sphere. One thing is certain, it will not occur either in the entrenched camps of the far right, or in the ‘progressive’ citadels of the statist but secularist opposition. Both these forms of cultural politics are too identified with the cultural establishments that suffocate the life of contemporary South Asia. Where and how a counter cultural current may emerge remains at present difficult to say, However, it is certain the years ahead will be marked by intense cultural conflict and efforts to re-define the whole realm of cultural politics, from many quarters. LR : Tell me more about the pirate electronic cultures in India. Raqs: We think that pirate electronic culture, in India or elsewhere, is an essential part of the fact of an enlargement of the digital domain. It enables access to cultural resources, and encourages creative re-purposing, reverse engineering and creativity at a street level. Pirate electronic cultures have done more for the dissemination of knowledge, creativity and culture than most proprietary systems can ever hope to achieve. LR : Then tell me what you think about pirated software and copyright ? Raqs: We think that copyright and other legal instruments of the enforcement of intellectual property regulations are serious hindrances to the free flow of information and knowledge. This is because the value of the content of intellectual resources does not diminish with successive acts of sharing and replication. We do not romanticize piracy, and we recognize that many of the most vociferous supporters of copyright today were pirates themselves yesterday. But we are generally appreciative of the ‘consequences’ of piracy, which as we said before, are increased access to cultural materials and information. LR : How and when did Sarai begin? What were the interests and motivations? Raqs: (We are enclosing a statement about how Sarai began from our website – www.sarai.net) “…To understand how Sarai began and a little of the background to Sarai, it may be necessary for us to take a brief step back to the summer of 1998, when five of us, (Ravi Vasudevan & Ravi Sundaram from CSDS, and Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula & Shuddhabrata Sengupta from the Raqs Media Collective) began to conceive of Sarai. The summer of '98 was a time for many new beginnings in the city of Delhi. The nineties had been a decade marked by doubt and rethinking on many fronts, all of which seemed to have come to a head for some of us during that summer. There was a sense of disquiet with increasing urban violence and strife, dissatisfaction with restrictive modes of thinking and practice within mainstream academia, the universities & the media and a general unease at the stagnation that underlay the absence of a critical public culture. At the same time, Delhi witnessed a quiet rebirth of an independent arts and media scene. This became evident in exhibitions and screenings that began taking place modestly in alternative venues, outside galleries and institutional spaces, and in archival initiatives that began to be active. Spaces for dissent and debate were being kept alive by clusters of teachers and students in the universities. New ideas, modes of communication and forms of protest were being tried out and tested on the streets. The Nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in the summer of 1998 had brought many people out on to the streets of Delhi in spontaneous protest. There was a vibrant energy evident in street level improvisations with new technologies. Public phone booths were transforming themselves into street corner cyber cafés, independent filmmakers were beginning to organise themselves in forums and a new open source and free software community made its mark in the city's BBSs (Electronic Bulletin Boards). The city itself, as a space and as an idea, was becoming a focus for enquiry and reflection, and a provocation for a series of creative experiments. It was from within this ferment of ideas, rough & ready plans, and fragments of proposals, that a series of conversations on film history, new media theory, media practice and urban culture was able to mature into the conceptual foundation of Sarai. Sarai (the space and the programme) takes its name from the caravan-serais for which medieval Delhi was well known. These were places where travelers and caravans could find shelter, sustenance and companionship; they were taverns, public houses, me ting places; destinations and points of departure; places to rest in the middle of a journey. Even today, the map of Delhi carries on it twelve place names that include the word Sarai. The Sarai Initiative interprets this sense of the word "sarai" to mean a very public space, where different intellectual, creative and activist energies can intersect in an open and dynamic manner so as to give rise to an imaginative reconstitution of urban public culture, new/old media practice, research and critical cultural intervention. The challenge before the founding group was to cohere a philosophy that would marry this range of concerns to the vision of creating a lively public space where research, media practice and activism could flow into each other. It took two years (1998-2000) to translate this conception into a plan for a real space and a design of a workable interdisciplinary programme of activities. Today, the Sarai Initiative embraces interests that include cinema history, urban cultures and politics, new media theory, computers, the Internet and software cultures, documentary filmmaking, digital arts and critical cultural practice. Sarai opened its doors to the public of Delhi in February 2001.” LR : What do you think of the cultural contents free access on the Internet? Raqs: We are all for free access to cultural resources on the Internet. We think making people pay for culture on the internet, or controlling cultural dissemination or production through strict proprietary control is demeaning of creative people and the public at large. In our own work, we, the Raqs Media Collective, address the issue of sharing of cultural resources online through our internet project, called Opus - www.opuscommons.net Opus is an acronym for "Open Platform for Unlimited Signification". It is an online space for people to play and work together - to share, create and transform images, sounds, videos and texts. It is a platform and un-ended and multi-directional production. It is an attempt to create a digital commons in culture based on the principle of sharing of work, while at the same time maintaining individual creativity. How Opus works (what can you do in Opus) Opus enables you to view, create and exhibit media objects (video, audio, still images, html and text) and make modifications on work done by others. It is an environment in which every viewer/user is also invited to be a producer, and is a means for producers to work alone/together to shape new content. You can view and download material, transform it and then upload the material worked on by you back to the Opus domain. Each media object archived, exhibited and made available for transformation within Opus carries with it data that can identify all those who have worked on it. This means that while Opus enables collaboration, it also preserves the traces of Authors/Creators (no matter how big or small their contribution may be) at each stage of a work’s evolution. The Idea The basic ideas of the Opus project is to create a community of creative people from all over the world, who want to share and gift to each other the images, sounds and texts made by them for general public usage. From another vantage point, it can be seen as a space of creativity that stands in a tense relationship to the language and protocols of property that increasingly marks knowledge and cultural production. Once you have published your work in Opus, each act of uploading by you becomes an opportunity for others to take your work as a starting point for transformation, for a new rendition, for a rescension. Opus users can also give their comments and reflections on your work through the discussion forums that will grow around each project within Opus. Opus is inspired by the free software movement and is an attempt to transpose the principles that govern the creation of free software on to general cultural production. Opus follows the same rules as those that operate in all free software communities - i.e. the freedom to view, to download, to modify and to redistribute. The source (code), in this case the video, image, sound or text – the contents of media objects uploaded on to Opus - is free to use, to edit and to redistribute. Needless to say the ‘source-code’ of the Opus software is also free to use, edit and redistribute. Opus users are governed by a license that protects them from their work being taken out of the commons and into the regimen of proprietary protocols. LR : How do you see the Indian cyberspace future ? Raqs: We see the future of cyberspace in India as being hinged on the finding of good and stable solutions for supporting South Asian languages and scripts online. The efforts in this direction need a lot more focus and energy. Once this is achieved, websites out of India will multiply exponentially, and we foresee a real renaissance of a contemporary cultural sensibility in South Asian languages on the web. Secondly, the sphere of online labour in Indian cities will expand hugely. This means data processing, remote servicing, medical and legal transcription and other telecom enabled services. This also means many millions of Indian men and women will go online to work, as members of a new digital proletariat. The future of cyberspace (if one can speak of such a thing) will be shaped by the millions of online digital workers in Indian cities. Finally, the tussle between proprietary and open systems of cultural production and distribution will become acute, and India, being home to one of the largest media industries in the world will be in the thick of the battle. Finally, the Internet will become even cheaper, and a lot easier to access, with that will come the possibility of a real struggle between those who want to retain its ‘public’ character, and those who want it to become a tool for control, surveillance, and profit. None of these conditions is unique to India (nothing is, in a globally networked world) but they will certainly shape the nature of getting and being online in India in the future . LR : Finally, what's yours favorite indians websites? Raqs : This is not an easy question to answer, as the term Indian Websites is not very meaningful to us. However, we can offer a few key websites that we think are relevant to this part of the world and are interesting to visit. South Asian Citizens Web http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/ Bytes for All An Online Newsletter from South Asia on IT solutions that put people before profit http://www.bytesforall.org Chowk Web Zine www.chowk.com Sulekha Web Zine www.sulekha.com Aar-Paar Collaborative Web Art Project by Indian and Pakistani Artists http://www.geocities.com/aarpaar_project Cypherpunks India - Mailing list on Cryptography, Politics and Society e-mail: cpunks-india-request@lists.vipul.net?subject=subscribe Himal South Asia Magazine www.himalmag.com Himal Mag South Asian Resources Directory http://www.himalmag.com/resources/ Drik : Media Resource Centre, Dhaka, Bangladesh http://www.drik.net South Asian Resources Across the Internet - Online bibliography and directory of South Asian Resources http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indiv/area/sarai/ South Asian Initiative http://www.south-asian-initiative.org/ South Asian Network for Alternative Media http://www.indowindow.com/dm/ South Asian Womens Network http://www.umiacs.umd.edu:80/users/sawweb/sawnet/index.html South Asian Journalists Association http://www.saja.org Centre for Science & Environment http://www.cseindia.org/

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